Gonzales wins ‘Best Tamales’

winner

 

NEWS Staff Report

The judges have voted, and a winner for the San Benito News’ ‘Best Tamales in Town’ contest has been decided. Irma Gonzalez’s tamales have once again been named the best of the best.

A panel of three judges tasted several tamales and judged them based on taste, texture, originality and presentation. After discussing their thoughts on each entry, and eating more tamales in a day than most people eat through an entire December in the Valley, the judges made their decision. Contestant number four was the winner. That turned out to be Gonzalez, who said that she’d already won three times. She didn’t win last year, but she said that’s because she didn’t enter.

“I feel good,” she said. Even then, she didn’t enter with a competitive attitude. She just figured she’d submit her tamales again.

Frutoso Gomez, chief appraiser at the Cameron County Appraisal District, who was a judge at the event, said this is something he’s wanted to do for several years. Scheduling just hasn’t allowed it until now.

“All the tamales were very excellent,” said Gomez.

Toni Crane, Paralegal for the State Bar of Texas at the Law Office of Randall P. Crane, and a Real Estate Agent for MPT International, was also a judge. She said, “It was kind of fun to try and figure out all the different … tastes.” Commenting on Gonzales’ winning entry, Crane said, “it didn’t have a lot of masa (the dough part of the tamale), and it had the right amount of meat in it.” She added that both the masa and the meat “had a good flavor.”

John Harth, a winter Texan who spends many of his days at San Benito’s Sun-N-Fun RV Park, said “Enjoyed it!” He added that “I didn’t realize there were that many types of tamales.” He had even picked up one lady’s address and planned to tamales from her in the near future.

Harth also enjoyed the fact that he hadn’t encountered any tamales he thought were “hot.” He said, “they (the tamales) were all mild. That was a good thing.”

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/12/24/gonzales-wins-best-tamales/

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